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Tower Defense: Medieval Style (Gonzo)

This screenshot has nothing to do with the content at hand, but I thought it illustrated part of the difficulty in defending big hunks of stone.

Do you have a castle to defend? I’d imagine
not. What are you, a king? You are a king of your room or dorm, not of a
castle… but let’s pretend that you do have a castle: *pretends that you have a
castle* …you have a castle! Great! Now, let me ask you this—how are you going
to defend it?

Such
was a question which kept many kings, especially crusader kings, up at night.
In medieval Germany, for instance, castles were entrusted to unfree knights who
maintained upkeep in the lord’s absence. Some parts of France also relied on
such hereditary systems to man the castle garrison. Meanwhile, in Anglo-Norman
England, castle garrisons would change with the local guard and thus was part
of their feudal service, part of their forty days of field service.

Length of service
would vary dramatically; sometimes, it could be as little as fifteen days of
service per year or it could be as much as four months of service per year.
Other than pulling straws from a hat or visiting a witch, there was no way to
determine, for sure, how to discover your length of service ahead of time. If
you were lucky, would be assigned to a lord who only expected you to discharge
your service in time of war, thus freeing up a substantial amount of free-time
on your end (free time to, well, you know… plow the fields and get drunk on
cold winter days?).

Needless to say,
castle guardship was a tedious affair. Such a state of affairs was widespread
and so it is unsurprising that the garrisoning of such castles soon
transitioned to a money-payment system. So, this meant that if a knight did not
wish to serve in a castle garrison, then he could forfeit some of his payment
and refrain from serving his term. Thankfully for the feudal kings, this
arrangement proved valuable and made crusading fairly easier now that mercenaries
could be hired to protect the castle while crusading was done (or vice versa,
depending on the lord and circumstance).

All of this said,
it should be obvious that such garrisons were always on a war footing,
especially in the Holy Land where at any time, the knights stationed within
might be called to battle. In such cases, even more so with the knight orders,
the hiring of mercenaries mattered little and the castle defenses would suffer
as a result. But, hey, what can you do? You can either have a well-defended
castle or you can have a knighthood of pure, radiant knights who adhere to a
shared code of conduct—you can’t necessarily have both, or at least have both
all of the time.

Choose wisely,
because if those skeletons slouching over those tables is any indication, the
previous occupants and ruler did not carefully consider their defensive options
when staffing, and I would just hate
to see you suffer the same fate! Now, if you will excuse me, my boss has
recalled me to his lair of doom and gloom to talk to me about Acre, or
something…

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Lately, I was browsing around online and found another handy resource for aspiring medievalists.

Enter, Western Michigan University's Medieval Institute!

The site has links to an extensive book shop, scholarly journals, as well as a free download. See below for links.

General listing: http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medievalpress/
Index of titles available for purchase: http://www.wmich.edu/medievalpublications/all-titles
The 'Medieval Globe' book(s): http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medieval_globe/ (Click on title(s) for free download)

Okay, that is all for now. Sometime soon I think that I would like to organize all of my resource links so that I, as well as you, have a concrete listing of reliable resources. Until then, we shall have to make due.